Who dives on their own Boat?

[copacabana]

I dive and clean my hull with a wide-blade scraper. My boat is kept in an area that has insane marine growth- no anti-fouling paint works for more than 6 months here. Diving and scraping the hull is a given. No need for tanks, just a mask and snorkel. It's good exercise and knowing you can dive and reach every part of your hull is an important safety feature. One day at sea you might have to dive to free your prop or remove a fishing net from your keel or rudder. I would also caution that if you need a tank to dive 6 feet under your hull you should really think about starting an exercise program, no matter how old you are.

[diverchick71]

If you were to use the gear from the boat, make sure that you get the gear professionally serviced. Usually the regulator will be about 75-100$ and it's recommended with most brands of gear that you service the gear annually.

[scud]

I dive almost every 2 weeks (40-footer racing). In winter I would use a sealed watertight suit while from April throughout October I use a 5mm wet-suit.

First I clean what I can without relying on the tanks then for disassembling°/assembling hte propeller or replacing the zinc, claning hte saildrive or the keel I would switch to the tanks. Of course with the watertight suit my movements are quite clumsy and I would recourse to teh tanks a lot earlier and more also because the water temp. would be about 11 Celsius or less.

As for the tanks the easiest way is to rig up a "narghile'", i.e., a long pipe (mine is about 60feet long) and leave the tank on the boat while you scuttle around.
No big deal about the gear either. You wouldn't need any jacket but you have to pay attention to weight yourself down properly. Less would mean fighting constantly with the buoyancy and too much would mean flipping all the time just to stay leveled with the spot. Do not worry about the air-regulator. After all you are diving maybe 6 feet deep fo rthe keel. Really no sweat at all.

[eko_eko]

I learned to dive so that I could do under water repairs on my old boat. It's easy and fun. It doesn't look like you have a dive computer, so just check your depth vs maximum bottom time on your charts.

I recall that I could spend an hour working on my anchors with no problem according to the charts.

I suggest you get good gloves if you've got a lot of bottom growth. I've had barnacles cut through mine. Also, some growth stings -- wear the wetsuit even in warm water. When you free lots of growth, the fish will come for a visit. We had a resident barracuda that made bottom cleaning ... interesting.

[aa3jy]

Diving on my boat in the Chesapeake is like Cave diving with out lights and no reference to a guide line..viz is like zilch

[satillasam]

Get a brush that floats. You have the rest.

[TQA]

I do mine when required with snorkel, mask and flippers plus an 8 inch SS scraper mounted on a 8 foot pole.

It takes me less than an hour total to do a 44 footer.

Using the pole mounted scraper is MUCH easier than a hand scraper or pad. It used to take several hours and much diving to do it with a hand pad. The scraper on the pole lets me do everything from the surface.

Mind you tha water is crystal clear and 80+ where I am.

[SimonV]

I free dive on mine, but need good clear visibility as I don't like Noah's. It takes me about 2 hours to do the job properly the first time and then every couple of weeks from then on taking about 45 minutes. One day I will make up my own 12v hooka.

[ambianceack]

I dive on my Sabre 34

[Zanshin]

Doing a good job cleaning your hull is going to be much easier with the dive gear and particularly with the BC (bouyancy compensator). I use almost a full tank when I do my hull - it is easy to work up a sweat and heavy breathing if the hull is particularly dirty. I will use a steel paint stripper from the hardware store and/or a heavy green kitchen pot cleaning pad. Having a tank also helps in diving down to retrieve the lost steel scraper when if falls down, which seems to happen once or twice a session in my case.
I'd get the scuba certification along with getting your gear checked out and you might even find an opportunity to do some enjoyable diving.